Notturno (5 page)

At least some of it. It wouldn’t do to give out all my secrets.”

The cab pulled up to the curb, and Adin removed his wallet

to pay the driver. “Thank you,” he said to the man, who looked

at him with curiosity. Adin smiled and exited the cab. Donte

followed him, rising easily to his full height, and closed the car

door behind them.

As usual Vin was packed; even late at night, a crowd

thronged the bar. They were informed there would be a wait for

a table, but Donte turned on the full power of his charm and

the electrified host sat them at a lovely, private table

immediately. Adin noticed others staring hard in their direction,

no doubt wondering who they were that they got the star

treatment. Adin shrugged his shoulders, and Donte took it as

his personal due, nodding regally at those who gazed at him.

“Noblesse oblige?” asked Adin.

“It never hurts to be kind, Adin.”

“Said the aristocrat vampire pornographer.” They sat in

silence until it was time to order wine.

“Hartford Court Pinot Noir 2005,” Donte told the

sommelier. “If you have it.”

“We do,” the man said. “A good choice.”

Donte returned his attention to Adin. “He’s thinking, ‘not

an
excellent
choice,’ and wondering why I would order a small California wine here, in a restaurant famous for its cellar.”

“So, you read minds?”

“No, I read faces. And to be honest, they are all beginning

to look remarkably similar. It puts me in rather a quandary. For

instance, how much of my attraction to you is because of you,

and how much is because you remind me of a certain French

portrait artist named Gilbert who completely rocked my world

during
la Terreur
?”

“I can see the dilemma.”

“Can you? Do I remind you of anyone?” Donte asked idly.

“No, Donte,” Adin admitted. “You are like no one I’ve ever

known in my life.”

28 Z.A. Maxfield

The wine arrived, and the sommelier enacted the wine

drama that never failed to make Adin wish he’d just ordered a

Bushmills. Donte didn’t play along much, refusing the cork,

then simply breathing in the aroma of the wine in the glass.

“Fine.” He smiled. “Thank you.” The sommelier retreated.

“This wine is delicious, but to be honest, I picked it because it

goes very well with—and I hope you won’t take this wrong—

you.”

“Ah.” Adin was almost speechless. “Well.
I
was going to

order the roast pork.”

“Oh, that has a cherry sauce. You’ll find that dish goes with

the wine as well, as there’s a complex cherry-berry note that

comes right through. Taste it if you want. You’ll notice it right

away.” Adin lifted his glass and took a small sip. Donte was

right. In its dry elegance, it had a definite undertone of cherry,

and something indefinable and sweet, like winter food.

“It tastes like Christmas.”

“Ah, that’s the allspice. You noticed? You have a good

palate.”

“Not really,” Adin murmured, absurdly pleased.

“So, you wonder about the garlic, which is a myth, by the

way. And you hope daylight will prevent me from taking what’s

mine.”

“Yes.”

“Well, in theory, it would. But I am sorry to tell you that a

number of things make it easier, including modern

pharmacology, which I believe is your sister’s purview, is it not?

Well, it makes the world a safer place for me. Better living, as

they say, through chemistry.”

“So you use sunscreen?”

“Yes, and hats and gloves. Oh, it’s a tedious process, and far

too hot in Los Angeles, but in the end, I can go where I like,

whenever I like. Even if I look like Michael Jackson while I’m

doing it. Still, there are few, if any, things I choose to do during the day, especially now that baseball is played at night, with

lights, even at Wrigley Field.”

NOTTURNO
29

“You like sports?”

“No.” Donte took a sip of his wine. “I don’t like sports

much at all. I like
baseball
, which is not a sport. I thought you were a literature professor. Baseball is a metaphor for

innocence.”

“I see. And the current controversy over performance-

enhancing drugs?”

“Once again, man bites the apple. It’s the oldest metaphor in

the book, literally. Now the sons and daughters of God are

again thrown from Eden.” He lifted the corners of his lips in a

half smile.

“And what about you, Donte? What did you do to earn

immortality?”

Donte’s eyes met Adin’s implacably. Adin didn’t consider

that he’d just refuse to answer, but refuse he did, changing the

subject adroitly after the waiter came to take their order. Adin

relaxed as the wine traveled its path through his body, warming

him and loosening his tongue.

“Well then, let me tell you why you will eventually give the

journal back to me,” said Donte.

“Yes, why?” Adin was beginning to feel thoroughly pleasant

in a toes-wrapped-in-cotton-batting kind of way. “What’s in

that book that you would be so determined to get it back? What

is in your own journal that you couldn’t write again?”

“As if I could begin to explain to you the complexities of

Italian noble life in the time during which I wrote that journal.”

Donte leaned his head on his hand. “Everything we did was

ruled by the nature. By the church. By the season of the year or

the light of the sun. We had little control over our destiny.”

“I imagine.”

“I doubt that very much. We were boys, Auselmo and I. I

was called Niccolo then, and we were fostered together,

destined, as third sons, for the church.”

“Really?”

30 Z.A. Maxfield

“Yes, although fate has a way of changing one’s plans, we

were both remarkably well suited to religious life. At the time

we were both serious and studious, yet filled with passion. Our

thirst for knowledge was insatiable. But then we noticed each

other; how could we not?”

“I see.”

“Well, no. You probably don’t have the first idea of that

kind of passion. If Auselmo sighed, it came from my lungs,

Adin. I might have been kilometers away, but I felt every beat

of his heart. From everything we knew about the world, this

was madness! We were completely incapable of understanding.

Completely innocent. Then one day Auselmo caught me in the

kitchen gardens and kissed me as no man has been kissed

before or since.”

Adin could say nothing.

“You believe the persistence of that memory has probably

been made more intense by the time afforded to me as an

immortal.” Donte nodded. “Yet when you read the journal,

when
I
read it, that kiss is as fresh on my lips as the day my lover placed it there.”

“Then he’s not…”

“No.” Donte was silent for a moment. “Auselmo is not an

immortal, like me. After five hundred years, it’s as if he was

barely more than a breath of wind that caressed me. Yet not a

day goes by that I do not wish to feel it again.”

“
Motherfuck.
” Adin raised his glass and drank to soothe the ache in his throat.

“Well.” Donte cleared his own throat. “I’ve turned morose.

Perhaps this would be a good time for you to sparkle.”

“I…uh,” said Adin, “would have liked to sit and read the

journal, but I haven’t had the time to go over it carefully in a

safe environment. Above all, I would like to protect it so it’s not lost.”

“So that everyone may see my most private and intimate—

and sometimes painful—thoughts. Yes. That surely is a worthy

goal.” Donte’s luscious lips thinned into a brief line.

NOTTURNO
31

The waiter arrived with Adin’s dinner, so beautifully plated

that he felt the absurd desire to just stare at it for a moment.

“This is nice,” he murmured, picking up his napkin and his

fork. “Look.” He stopped with his fork halfway to his plate.

“Usually, when I find a manuscript, there’s no one around,

living or undead, who can lay claim to any part of the

intellectual content inside it. This is utterly new to me. Can you

understand that, very possibly, it’s that slight breath of wind

that I’m trying to preserve? If the journal goes, everything that

was Auselmo goes with it, except for that which is in your

remarkably well-preserved person. He is gone as irrevocably as

if he never existed. I’m not a panderer, Donte. I’m not just

some pimp looking for erotic cartoons.”

Adin returned his attention to his food, and Donte watched

him thoughtfully. Adin continued to eat, content for the

moment to remain silent, and it was in this silence that he felt

Donte’s hand cover his on the table, the long, elegant fingers

stroking gently, thoughtfully, over his more square ones.

Adin looked up at Donte, who was then in the middle of

taking a sip of his wine. He took in Donte’s demonically

beautiful face, long and angular, with its hooded eyes and high

cheekbones, its wine-darkened lips. He watched as Donte

savored it, imagining the warmth of the wine on the inside of

Donte’s mouth and against his tongue. He could almost feel it

as it slid down the column of Donte’s throat, teasing his

Adam’s apple into a subtle bob, and suddenly Adin was the

wine, slipping down that throat, and just as inexplicably, Adin

felt Donte’s mouth on him everywhere at once,

biting…licking…sucking. Adin’s breath sped up; his skin

warmed with the beginnings of a flush brought on by arousal.

He shifted in his seat, and where his clothing touched his cock

and balls, it was electric, setting intimate little fires along his nerve endings, which were so sensitive they were painful.

“Donte,” he murmured as his back arched totally out of his

control. He slid a little farther down in his seat, his fork

clattering to the table noisily. “Oh.” He sighed as the sensation

of being invaded physically broke over him in waves. His head

dropped back while his body rang like a bell. As he dragged in a

32 Z.A. Maxfield

lungful of air, he shuddered around what felt like the fullness of

Donte driving his cock into him over and over. All he could do

was breathe through it, panting in the throes of sexual

stimulation that gripped him like a vise.

Donte watched him, his own face completely impassive.

Adin felt overly warm, and his breath huffed in little gasps as

his face slackened, his brain whiting out in the moments before

his release. Donte smiled into his glass like a ventriloquist who

drinks water and watches his puppet speak as Adin’s body

jerked once, twice, and a third and final time, his hips snapping

below the tiny bistro table, as he moaned and rolled his head

from side to side.

As his breathing returned to normal, Adin snatched his hand

out from beneath Donte’s and returned to sitting upright. He

looked around him in an agony of personal shame and carefully

picked up his fork, then placed it on his plate with the knife to

signal he was done with his meal.

“
Complet, mon cher
Adin
?
”

French, was it then? “
Salopard,
” Adin ground out.
Bastard.

He threw his napkin on the table and got up to find the men’s

room.

Adin squeezed himself between patrons in the wine bar and

edged through to the bathroom, where he could hide alone in

the single tiny stall.
Alone
, he realized, was a relative word since he’d met Donte, as his blood was doing its peculiar whispering;

Donte’s voice in a myriad of different languages, singing to him,

lighting fires all along the shallow capillaries below the surface

of his skin. As he cleaned himself up, Adin had his first very

real frisson of fear.

Donte could be amusing, entertaining, urbane, even boyishly

charming. But it would never do to forget for one second that

he was—in his own words—the apex of the food chain on this

planet. Adin looked at himself in the small mirror over the sink.

He’d never been the type of man to back down. Back away,

maybe. Reevaluate his options, certainly. He prided himself on

being pragmatic and shrewd and slow to panic when the shit hit

the fan. He’d caught Donte off guard more than once.

NOTTURNO
33

Yet faced with the kind of power that Donte seemed to

possess, his charisma, and his experience, Adin had to

acknowledge that he was intimidated and afraid. It had been so

long since he’d felt either of those emotions, he hadn’t even

recognized them for what they were. Faced with imminent

danger, yet subject to a perverse and powerful erotic longing, he

was fucked. Entirely and completely fucked.

Adin took stock as he looked at his face in the mirror. He

saw nondescript brown hair, slightly long, slightly on the wavy

side, atop what he thought was an unremarkable face. Blue eyes

looked back at him. When he smiled, people told him they

found it charming. He rarely got angry, yet was known around

the school for a badgerlike determination to get what he

wanted.
I am Donte, the apex of the food chain on this planet.
He shoved at the large round knob on the hand dryer and rubbed